


Vice

by Zanne



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-06-08
Updated: 2011-06-08
Packaged: 2017-10-19 21:27:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 817
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/205380
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zanne/pseuds/Zanne
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John doesn't drink, he wishes and regrets.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Vice

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks ever so to [](http://tigriswolf.livejournal.com/profile)[ **tigriswolf**](http://tigriswolf.livejournal.com/)  for beta-ing like The Flash. John comes out more of a creepy stalker than I like in this, but...well, I needed to write something not related to conversational analyses of any sort. The commandment used is a variation on the standard interpretation of _Thou shall not covet thy neighbor's wife_. Kripke owns the Winchesters and has probably lost every last shred of his remaining hair by yanking it out, knowing that out there someone like me is completely destroying his lovingly created characters.

  
John always let his boys assume he was going out for a drink – just a little something to relax, unwind after a hard day’s/week’s/month’s hunt. It got to the point John was going out more often than he was staying in. As his boys grew older, they thought he was a drunk, lost to the momentary numbness the booze offered when even just waking up in the morning sometimes took more effort than it should.

They never knew the truth.

It was better that they didn’t. Let them have the comfort of a drunken father to remember, to ridicule, to blame.

John rarely set foot in a bar. Yeah, he’d had his bad days when the lure of forgetting was just too much to refuse, but John could count those days without taking off his shoes and, for nearly a quarter of century to have passed, that wasn’t so bad.

John’s only vice was wishing. That’s all. Not such a bad vice, was it?

Some might call it coveting, but wishing made it sound harmless, like less of a sin. Every child wished - why couldn’t an adult harbor a wish, too?

Rather than secreting himself in the smoky dimness of a bar, with the muffled clicks of the billiards and the twangy songs playing on the slowly breaking-down Jukebox in the corner, John went to…

...watch the mothers - sometimes fathers, too, which almost hurt more - and their children reveling in the feel of the sun or the wind or the rain on their skin, out for some innocent fun as the children pretended to fly on the swings or daringly braved the treacheries of the slide. John tilted his head back and closed his eyes, feeling like maybe he was enjoying it, too, just for a little bit.

He listened to these strangers' children laughing in that carefree way his boys never did, pure joy spilling from those tiny bodies as if there were just too much happiness in the world for them to contain.

 _Happiness_. Felt so freely here, given away as if it were nothing. It was an idyllic little world that his never touched – a sanctuary where nothing bad could ever happen. This was a place of joy and purity and _life_.

                                                                 ~~~~~~~~~~~

Sometimes, however, one family would draw at John. He never understood why – it was a visceral pull he couldn’t deny, an itch that got under his skin and rankled the little hairs on the back of his neck.

Maybe it was the way the mother’s hair gleamed gold in the sunlight or blew like a blonde sheet in the wind or curled charmingly in darkening yellow tendrils as the rain dampened its shine.

Maybe it was the way the father would fold himself down until he was only half his original size, his dark hair off-setting the brightness of his tow-headed children as he lifted one up with each arm – like Atlas holding his own small world on his shoulders.

Whatever it was, John would batten down with his boys in the town for _weeks_ and just…

 _...watch_ , the jealousy burning through him just as the flames had coursed over his Mary. John never realized that _want_ could hurt so much.

They became his routine, became what he hunted. John observed them from the cloaking darkness outside their windows, the light inside illuminating the pane like a TV screen, rendering him invisible as it showed him exactly what he was missing. Hands in his jacket pockets, shoulders hunched and head hanging low, John stood in the darkness and _yearned_.

 _That should be **his**._

 _That was what was **taken** from him._

Then another voice would worm its way into his brain, when the _wishing_ and _regretting_ and _wanting_ grew nearly beyond his control….

 _Thou shall not covet thy neighbor’s house._

…that little clause that Pastor Jim reiterated so often when he saw that look in John’s eyes, when he recognized the signs of too many sleepless nights _craving_ and _hoping_ and _needing_.

Pastor Jim was the only man who knew what John wished for, and he was the only man to live that told John he was wrong.

                                                            ~~~~~~~~~~~~~

When John’s life flashed before his eyes in that final minute - Dean’s warm breath still fresh on his cheek and Sam’s cry of disbelief still echoing over his prone form on the cold hospital tile, the heavy weight of the Demon pressing in for its due - what John saw was a series of windows.

Always on the outside looking in, alone, his boys locked in the safety of a salt-lined motel room somewhere miles away – their only shelter the prison he created for them to ensure their physical survival.

John realized something in that microsecond as his heart shuddered to a stop and his last breath struggled out, feeling that oh-so-familiar _needing_ coming from his boys….

He always wanted what he already had.


End file.
